Federal agents checked medical staff of the San Francisco 49ers, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and the Seattle Seahawks. The DEA checks were part of an investigation into former players’ claims that NFL teams often gave painkillers. No arrests were made.

New York—Crimes against jewelers dropped in the first half of the year while the number of criminals being apprehended nearly doubled, Jewelers’ Security Alliance statistics for Jan. 1 to June 30 show.

According to the figures, which were released last week by the JSA, the total number of crimes against the jewelry industry fell from 740 in the first six months of 2013 to 641 this year, a 13 percent drop.

JSA President John J. Kennedy said the reason for the drop in crime is the increase in another statistic the JSA tracks: arrests of jewelry criminals, particularly the prolific gangs that work in packs.

“That has a dramatic, cumulative effect on reducing crime,” he said. “You take out a bunch of people, you have less crime.”

Five municipal police departments and one state police troop flouted Freedom of Information law in a statewide compliance check this month by refusing to release even basic arrest information upon request.

New Haven police didn’t provide any required information, with spokesman David Hartman telling a reporter who asked to see the arrest log, that “You’ll never get blotter from us, we are just too damn busy.”

“It is not public information; these are arrests, not convictions,” Hartman added.

On Wednesday, two high school boys will stand trial on charges of raping the girl in August, but more is at stake than the futures of the defendants. Steubenville, once famous for steel, Dean Martin and football trophies, is also on trial, and it is fighting to clear itself of accusations that a small-town fixation on high school athletes allowed a hideous crime to occur in front of witnesses who didn’t report it.

“The actions of a few have basically condemned our whole city,” City Manager Cathy Davison said. “Obviously we do not support sexual assault.” Fallout from the case has prompted Steubenville, population 19,000, to hire a Washington-based crisis manager to guide it through the tumult.

Critics of the investigation, though, cannot understand why more people have not been charged with failure to report a crime.

Most prominent among those critics is Alexandria Goddard, a crime blogger who grew up in the area and whose early postings on the incident helped propel the case to national prominence. Goddard, who no longer lives here, saw a news report on the arrests of Ma’lik Richmond and Trent Mays, both 16, on Aug. 22. The arrests were made after the girl, who says she was too intoxicated to recall details, became aware of pictures and chatter online about the incident. She told her parents, who went to police.

FlaviaI've seen the pictures that were deemed fit for public consumption. I have also heard an audio tape made by one of the rapists. Note what I said there? Rapists. Except for the dangerous precedent it would set, I say ...

Federal authorities in New Jersey are ending 2012 with the arrests of two accused white supremacists who allegedly went on a hate-filled assault spree last New Year’s Eve.

Christopher Ising, 31, a reported member of the Atlantic City Skins from Waretown, N.J., was arrested today by FBI agents on an indictment charging him with conspiracy and commission of a hate crime assault. Those laws are contained in the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, passed by Congress in 2009.

Michal Gunar, 27, of East Windsor, N.J., also faces the same federal charges. He is an alleged member of another New Jersey-based white supremacist group known as the Aryan Terror Brigade, the FBI said in announcing the arrests.

The arrests grew out of a New Year’s Eve party last year in East Brunswick, N.J., where Ising hosted a “meet and greet” gathering for white supremacists, FBI officials said.

A half hour before the New Year rang in, Ising and Gunar drove to an apartment complex in Sayreville, N.J., “with the express purpose of assaulting random, non-Caucasian individuals,” court documents allege.

Sovereign Wingnut?

Bomb threats to 30 courthouses and other government buildings across Tennessee forced many to be evacuated Tuesday, including the federal building in Memphis, but authorities said no explosives were found.

Tennessee became the fourth state to deal with similar bomb hoaxes. One targeted 28 courthouses in Oregon and similar threats were reported in Nebraska and Washington this month.

Nine threats were reported in West Tennessee counties — including the Memphis federal building — seven in Middle Tennessee and 14 in East Tennessee, said Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security spokeswoman Dalya Qualls.

No arrests have been made in Tennessee and authorities had searched about 14 courthouses by Tuesday afternoon.

The plot had parallels with Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian who set off a bomb in Oslo last year and then went on a gun rampage on a nearby island, killing a total of 77 people.

“The would-be bomber did not hide his fascination with Breivik. This should not be ignored,” Tusk told a news conference.

The prime minister said that investigators had found practical connections to Breivik too: the Norwegian bought bomb components in Poland, he said, and an analysis of his contacts helped lead Polish intelligence to the suspect.

Authorities in Norway said they had been in touch with their Polish counterparts but gave no details.

Briefing reporters in the Polish capital, prosecutors said the suspect had assembled a small arsenal of explosive material, guns and remote-controlled detonators and was trying to recruit others to help him.

A video recording taken from the suspect, who has not been publicly identified, showed what prosecutors said was a test explosion he conducted, sending up a huge cloud of dust and leaving a large crater in the ground.

“He claims that he was acting on nationalistic, anti-Semitic and xenophobic motives,” prosecutor Mariusz Krason said.

“He believed the situation in the country is going in the wrong direction, described the people ruling Poland as foreign and said they were not true Poles.”

“He carried out reconnaissance in the neighborhood of the Sejm (parliament). This building was to be the target of the attack,” Krason said.

It’s as much ritual as protest, and both sides know the drill cold. Before the test launch of an ICBM, anti-nuclear demonstrators clutching homemade signs gather outside Central California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base where the Pacific Coast Highway knifes through the sprawling installation. They stand on one side of the prominent green line painted across the asphalt near the guard shack, while military police stand on the other. Eventually, a small knot of the protesters emerges from the larger group and strides across the line, and into the arms of the waiting, and likely a little bored, MPs. Arrests for trespassing follow, and soon enough everyone who isn’t now wearing bracelets goes back to their workaday activities.

Usually the sacrificial lambs are few and not overly prominent, but a launch earlier this year drew an all-star cast of peaceniks—Daniel Ellsberg, Cindy Sheehan, Father Louis Vitale, MacGregor Eddy, and (sometime miller-mccune.com contributor) David Krieger, among others—to deliver to the base commander a letter explaining that the launch breached the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and was therefore illegal. But with the Air Force having a different view of the proceedings, the only detentions for illegal activities made this day were of activists.

Flanked by a cadre of local law enforcement, including Boise, Caldwell, Meridian and Nampa police, U.S. Attorney Wendy Olson announced Tuesday afternoon that a federal grand jury has handed down indictments of 21 members of the Aryan Knights gang, a white supremacist gang operating in and out of Idaho prisons.

Law enforcement charged 12 current inmates in Idaho prisons, and arrested five more people this morning. Four more individuals remain at-large. The 21 are charged with distributing methamphetamine and possessing firearms.

“With these indictments and arrests, we have made the streets safer and weakened the operations of the Aryan Knights,” said Olson.

Olson told Citydesk that a significant number of members of the Aryan Knight gangs remain in Idaho prisons, but those convicted of the new charges will be sent out-of-state to serve additional time in federal prisons.

About 50 arrests have been made in connection with the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi in which the American Ambassador and three other consulate employees were killed, and some of the suspects involved are from outside the country, Libya’s president told CBS News.

In an interview for “Face the Nation” Sunday, President Mohamed Magariaf also said that evidence “leaves us with no doubt” that the attack was pre-planned.

“It was planned, definitely, it was planned by foreigners, by people who entered the country a few months ago, and they were planning this criminal act since their arrival,” he told Bob Schieffer.

On the same program, however, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice said the U.S. has no evidence proving that the attacks in Benghazi were premeditated.

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